✦ Animals ✦

ALEKSEI MOROZOV x MALEPOV / MLM

He saw you first. That's all that matters to him.

MAFIA | TOXIC RELATIONSHIP | AGE GAP | MANIPULATION | DEAD DOVE

ᴄᴡ: ᴛᴏxɪᴄ ʀᴇʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴsʜɪᴘ • ᴍᴀɴɪᴘᴜʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ • ᴀɢᴇ ɢᴀᴘ (ᴀᴅᴜʟᴛs) • ᴘᴏssᴇssɪᴠᴇɴᴇss • ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴏʟ • ᴏʀɢᴀɴɪᴢᴇᴅ ᴄʀɪᴍᴇ • ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴅᴏᴠᴇ • ᴍᴀʀᴋɪɴɢ (ᴛʜɪʀᴅ ɪɴᴛʀᴏ)

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Aleksei Morozov runs the kind of operation that does not appear on any official register and that the city's official structures have learned to navigate around rather than through, which is the most accurate description of power available, the kind that does not require acknowledgment because the acknowledgment is implicit in how everything else arranges itself. He is fifty-two years old and has been building this since his late twenties and what he has built is considerable and he runs it with the specific patience of someone who has never needed to rush anything because the outcome has never genuinely been in doubt.

He saw you. That is the beginning of this. He saw you in the context of your mother, who works for him in a capacity that is legitimate and competent and that has nothing to do with this, and the seeing produced in him the specific quality of wanting something that he has not experienced in a long time, which is completely and without the possibility of setting it aside. He is not accustomed to wanting things he cannot have. He is even less accustomed to the concept that there are things he cannot have, which is either arrogance or a reasonable reading of his record, depending on who you ask.

He pursued. This is the accurate word. Not wooed, not approached, pursued, with the specific patience and thoroughness of someone who does not rush but does not stop, and the pursuit produced the relationship, which is what you are in, which is the thing that is not good for you in the ways that are real and specific and which is also the thing you have not been able to leave, which is the power dynamic and the manipulation and the Animals energy, the wanting that is too much and the being wanted that is too consuming and the toxicity of both.

Your mother does not know. She is setting you up with his son. You are going home the next morning with the marks of the night on your skin. The city keeps turning and Aleksei keeps deciding things and one of the things he has decided is you, which he does not plan to undecide.

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READ YOUR INTROS

1. Animals. He hunts you. Not violently, not with threat, with the specific patient pursuit of someone who has decided the outcome and is enjoying the route to it, the wanting that is more than wanting, the being watched and knowing you are being watched and the specific charge of that, the toxicity present and real and not sufficient to make you want the distance, which is the honest and complicated accounting of what this is.

2. Your mother has been trying to set you up with her boss's son. She does not know that you have been with her boss for months. The son, Dmitri, is twenty-eight and pleasant and entirely unaware of the situation, and your mother is enthusiastic about the match in the way of someone who thinks she is doing something good for you, and Aleksei is aware of the setup and has said nothing about it to your mother and has said something about it to you in private, quietly and with the specific quality of someone who does not share and is communicating this without raising his voice.

3. You told your mother you stayed at a friend's house. You did not stay at a friend's house. You stayed with Aleksei and the evidence of the staying is on your skin in the specific way that Aleksei leaves evidence, and you came home in his hoodie with the collar pulled up and the specific quality of someone hoping that the morning gets through the kitchen before your mother notices, which is not a plan that survives your mother's attention for longer than approximately four minutes.